Herald Blogs

Forget the fuss, both left and right, about the way the news media are covering the war in Iraq. What about that other war -- the one on drugs? Hey, whatever happened to that? Well, it's still with us, reports NPR's All Things Considered. In a five-part series aptly titled The Forgotten War that airs next week, reporters John Burnett, Laura Sullivan and Juan Forero take a look at both the supply and demand sides of the war, update the Bush administration's so-called Plan Colombia (six years and $5.4 billion later, it's still chugging away with no end in sight) and profiles drug czar John P. Walters.

What did the NPR reporters find? That all the government's efforts haven't done a thing to drive drug prices up, which suggests that there's been no effect on supply lines. That all the drug warriors' mucking about in Colombia and the Caribbean has accomplished is to drive the cocaine trade and all its attendant violence into Mexico. That the huge population of prison inmates jailed under tough new laws in the late 1980s and early 1990s is now hitting the streets, with disastrous consequences for cities like Oakland. In short, we had to destroy the village to save it.

There's some impressive reporting in The Forgotten War. Yet it's a little discouraging that NPR could do, by its own count, 100 interviews over six months and still not find a single person to argue the merits of the single untested strategy -- that is, legalization. Instead, everybody chews over the same old arguments about interdiction vs. treatment, even though neither of them has ever worked. Still, it's nice that somebody in the news media remembers there's a drug war out there. If you want to listen, All Things Considered airs in South Florida from 4 to 6 p.m. and 6:30 to 7 p.m. on WLRN-FM, 91.3 on the dial.

Her conquest of Donald Trump complete, Rosie O'Donnell is on to bigger and better things. Now she's turned to debunking the silly myth that Osama bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, and also accused Great Britain of provoking the capture of its military personnel by Iran in order to provide a phony pretext for war.

O'Donnell's comments, which set off a torrent of pro-and-con comments on the Internet, were made Thursday on The View, the ABC talk show she co-hosts. First she dismissed British claims that its 15 sailors and marines were captured outside Iranian territorial waters, then added that the whole thing was an excuse to declare war. "Gulf of Tonkin. Google it,'' she snapped, referring to the 1964 naval skirmish that led to the escalation of the Vietnam War, an event some critics said was exaggerated or falsified by President Lyndon Johnson.

Then O'Donnell turned her attention to Sept. 11. She said one of the World Trade Center buildings was "imploded'' by explosives planted inside. "It is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved,'' she added.

"Who do you think is responsible for that?'' asked her nonplussed co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck. ""I have no idea,'' replied O'Donnell. But in her blog, she suggests the building was blown up to destroy evidence of the corporate financial scandals at Enron and WorldComm.

It's not likely to work, but you've got nothing to lose, except possibly a case of carpal tunnel syndrome if you vote too many times. The E! Online website is offering a platform called SOS: Save One Show, where you can vote for the ratings-impair broadcast network series you'd most like to see back next fall. There are 17 different shows on the ballot, everything from Six Degrees to Supernatural, and E! Online columnist Kristin Veitch "will do her best to persuade network executives to pick up the highest voted show for another season."

I can assure you that Jeff Zucker and Les Moonves are about as likely to stand on their heads naked and eat a bug on Kristin Veitch's say-so as to keep a show they want to cancel. The networks don't care about what she or any other TV writer (including, astonishingly, me) thinks. For that matter, they don't care what you think either, only what you watch, and if the numbers aren't there, they aren't there.

The single possible exception to this ironclad rule might be The CW, where the audience is so infinitesimal that the mild publicity buzz generated by a commuted death sentence for a show on the ratings bubble like Veronica Mars or Gilmore Girls might add enough viewers to make it worthwhile for the network. Of the five shows Veitch claims to have saved with past campaigns, four -- One Tree Hill, Veronica Mars, Roswell and Angel -- were on UPN or The WB, the networkettes from which The CW was formed.

Some of the shows on Veitch's ballot are ringers (I don't think anybody believes that Scrubs is in serious danger of cancellation) and others are already dead meat. (Six Degrees and The Nine are not coming back to ABC next season unless you've got pictures of ABC programming boss Stephen McPherson cavorting naked with Donald Duck's underage nephews.) But a click or two for Supernatural or Veronica Mars couldn't hurt.

Though, God knows, there's not much reason to care. Pro wrestling, Pussycat Dolls tryouts, and models dressed like corpses on American's Next Top Model -- it's amazing, but The CW has somehow managed to be worse than either of the halfwit networks (UPN and The WB) that merged to give it life, the word "life" being used quite loosely here. Anyway, in a reminder that the CW still has some scripted program -- at least for the time being -- the network is bringing back Veronica Mars on May 1 and One Tree Hill on May 2. It's hard to figure out The CW's programming strategy, if it even has one, but neither of these dramas has done well in the ratings this season, and this could be the last hurrah for both.

Judging shows before you've seen them is unwise and unfair, but come on: Heather Locklear as an investment banker? In a sitcom? That's the premise of ABC's latest pilot, See Jayne Run. Who would have thought that in March we'd already be making bets on the first show to be canceled this fall?

Joe Theismann says he was surprised at Monday's news that ESPN was firing him from Monday Night Football. He shouldn't have been. As the Herald's Barry Jackson reports, Theismann says ESPN executives complained that "when the conversation got back to me, I talked about football. I wasn't given any indication that I was supposed to talk about anything else. I thought [football] is what we do." Idiot. How could he not have known he was there to talk about Grey's Anatomy and Jimmy Kimmel? Though I must say in Theismann's defense, every time I turned on Monday Night Football last fall, that's exactly what he was doing.

Whether you think that Wal-Mart is a fascist threat to workers and families or a bargain-hunter's delight, you're likely to find Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott's interview with Neil Cavuto today interesting. Scott, who rarely talks to journalists, discusses Wal-Mart's problems with environmentalists and labor unions, as well as its attempt to get into the banking business. The interview airs during Cavuto's Your World show from 4 to 5 p.m.

Since Cagney & Lacey has been getting canceled every 20 minutes or so for the past 25 years, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this. But as of 1:38 p.m. on March 27, 2007, the DVD release on Mother's Day is back on.

Tony Kornheiser and Joe Tirico will have a new pal to chat about ABC reality-TV stars and barbecue tips and most anything except football in the ESPN Monday-night booth this fall. ESPN announced today that Joe Theismann has been energetically hurled overboard, to be replaced by studio analyst (and, like Theismann, a former NFL quarterback) Ron Jaworski. Theismann "has been offered a prominent football analyst role with ESPN," which I'm guessing is working as color man on Arena Football taxi-squad games. Given that Monday Night Football has become nothing but a whorish promotional vehicle for the television series of ESPN's corporate cousin ABC, ESPN is probably doing Theismann a big favor.